JULIA MAITLAND

Letters from Madras 1843

edited by Alyson Price

Letters from Madras appeared anonymously in 1843. It is one of the earliest published accounts of the Englishwoman's experience of India, antedating Fanny Parks (1850) and Emily Eden (1866). Julia Thomas, as she then was, arrived in Madras with her civil servant husband in 1837, and returned to England following his death after sudden illness at the end of 1839.

Alert, highly intelligent, independently-minded, Julia was the daughter of Charlotte Barrett, a niece of Fanny Burney the novelist and granddaughter of Dr Charles Burney, the historian of music. After describing the social round in Madras (where she notes the rudeness of the British to the Indians and their ignorance of the country) she and her husband moved 400 miles north-east to Rajahmundry, where they lived in a style (though with 27 servants) of isolation and simplicity. Two children were born. Julia was resolved to maintain her 'Orientalism', and to understand India. She was sometimes exasperated by Indian life and customs, but she learnt a language, seized every opportunity to visit Indians (and, when possible, Indian women), and involved herself in education.

It was a time when attitudes were changing, the early, relaxed fusion of European and Indian cultures giving way to a separation between governors and governed. Company indifference towards Indian religion was under pressure from missionaries and from Evangelicals at home. Julia founded a school and did her best to tread a path between Indian beliefs, Company policy, and her own Anglican orthodoxy. In its involvement with these matters Letters from Madras is a chapter in the history of Europe's engagement with India.

Julia botanized and entomologized, sending specimens home to the British Museum. She sketched, and painted in water-colours; examples of her delicate work are included in this edition. But it is the vividness of her writing, as well as her analytical understanding, that commands attention. She brings from her literary and musical family a writer's gifts, an ability to describe places and people, and a nicely understated wit.

On her return home Julia remarried. She assisted her mother in the preparation of the massive, seven-volume edition of Burney's diary and letters of 1842-6. She wrote three books for children, and died in 1864.

Alyson Price lives in Florence. She has worked as a teacher, university administrator and archivist. She has a special interest in India, where she has travelled widely. In her introduction and notes she makes use of the original letters on which Letters from Madras is based.

"Alyson Price has edited the letters with skill: her introduction puts them in their historical context and her notes tell the reader enough without overdoing the academic pill." John Saumarez Smith, Country Life.

£30 $45

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